Various communication capabilities are becoming more and more popular also in a car, automotive, motor cycle, environment both in work and free time usage. The most common existing communication capability is the ability to receive radio transmission in a car. The car is provided with an antenna, which has been placed in such a location that it is able to receive radio transmissions. The antenna is cabled to a car radio which processes signals received via the antenna. Relating to cellular communications, although it is possible to use a normal mobile phone in a car, most car manufacturers nowadays offer also an integrated mobile communication solution in their cars. In the integrated solutions, the car comprises the necessary components that are needed for cellular communications. In this solution, all the user needs to do is to insert his user identity module into the integrated system. The integrated system typically uses a dedicated antenna which is located, for example, on the roof of the car. The antenna is cabled to a centralized unit near a dashboard of the car, and the centralized unit comprises the remaining components needed for cellular communications.
In order to receive a radio frequency (RF) signal properly in most conditions, an antenna receiving the RF signal need to be located outside the car chassis. If the antenna is inside the car chassis, the received RF signals are significantly attenuated or otherwise interfered. The car chassis attenuation to the RF signals may be significant and this attenuation depends at least on signal and fading signal directions, antenna locations, antenna directivity, objects and material properties in signal path, operational signals frequency, etc. Furthermore, the longer the antenna cable is, the higher is the attenuation resulting from the cable. Additionally, attenuation may be related to antenna cable quality and quality of connectors, quality of joint between connectors, quality of joint between connectors and cable. The reception quality is also impacted by signal to noise and signal to interference ratios. Furthermore, reasonably good quality RF cables and connectors are usually also expensive.
Furthermore, in an automotive environment already rather short cables and connectors may be affected by noise sources and interferences sources so that reception quality may degrade by a detectable amount. For example, a user may detect a reduced net coverage or reduced data throughput.
Inspecting RF frequency related interferences and interfered system may be a difficult problem to solve in a distributed architecture, especially when a root cause may be an unsuccessful assembly during manufacturing. The same which applies between an antenna and RF components following the antenna applies also to RF signals' quality and attenuation between active/passive RF components/RF transceiver. Active RF components may also need additional controls and a power source with cabling for a designed operation. Furthermore, signals between an RF transceiver and a cellular transceiver baseband module may be impacted by interferences and signal attenuation thus degrading communication system performance. Similarly, if RF signals are to be sent with an antenna located inside the car chassis, coverage of the RF signals decreases significantly due to attenuation.
Cabling in a car is easiest to make when manufacturing the car. The cabling and other special purpose sensitive technology and electricity, however, needs to be transparent for the owner of the car. Thus, when manufacturing a car and installing, for example, a radio antenna and an antenna for cellular communications, a significant amount of cabling needs to be done and a number of different modules and other components are needed. Installation also takes time. Later on, when an installed module or other component is malfunctioning and/or is being interfered, maintenance costs due to various electrical parts, skilled workmanship, needed testers etc. may be significant for finding and replacing the malfunctioning module, component, cable or connector.
Furthermore, in the automotive industry, various parts of a vehicle need to be made available for a long time as spare parts. Sometimes two separate parts need to also be type approved together, especially radio related parts. This may lead to a situation that a new part may not be functional with an older part, for example due to an emission spectrum or interoperability, and thus it would be necessary to replace both parts if one them is to be replaced. Technology and new requirements, relating to, for example, taxation or road taxes, may require modularity and upgradability from systems in a car during its lifetime, which may be quite long in automotive cases. This also generates various requirements for parts of a vehicle.
It would be beneficial to solve or at least alleviate the above drawbacks.